The Burden of Care
by Oystercatcher1
Summary: As Captain Janeway withdraws into depression, Seven of Nine begins to become more aware of her own feelings and those of others around her. But can Seven use her new awareness to help Captain Janeway cope with her dark emotions?
1. Chapter 1

Summary: As Captain Janeway withdraws into depression, Seven begins to become more aware of her own feelings and those of others around her. But can Seven use her new awareness to help Captain Janeway cope with her dark emotions?

_A/N: Many grateful thanks to Mrs Singing Violin for throwing down the original challenge to write this story and for making a truly Herculean effort to improve this story when betaing it. Gratitude is also owed to Aunt Kathy for her feedback and for all the support. _

Chapter 1

Seven of Nine, former Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, opened her eyes as she emerged from her regeneration cycle and stepped down from the Borg alcove. She was experiencing that odd sense of unease again. Recently, it was there each time she came out of regeneration; as if something were off or missing or indefinably not right. For the former Borg drone who prided herself on her efficient approach to life, the sensation was irritating to say the least.

She tried a cheery smile in the mirror set up on the crate opposite her alcove. Her own reflection grimaced back at her. She frowned and noted wryly to herself that she had that particular expression down perfectly. She tried a friendly expression of interest and concern but only looked pained. It seemed that her journey towards humanity was a long and sometimes disheartening one. She would like to talk to the captain about it and with that thought she remembered the present situation. She sighed and turned away, thereby missing a very convincing look of sorrow that crossed her face.

She ran a quick diagnostic on her alcove and dictated a dry summary of the tasks facing her over the coming day. She wanted to start as soon as possible in Astrometrics, working on refining and improving Voyager's course through the next sector of space. She knew from experience that even a small reduction in the journey time would probably bring a smile to the Captain's face…at least, it had done so in the past. Maybe if Seven could shave a whole month off the journey or find a source of much-needed deuterium, then the Captain would at least give some kind of expression of satisfaction, however mild or fleeting.

But even though Seven wanted to make her way straight to Astrometrics, she knew that it was important to go to the mess hall in order to have some breakfast and at least greet other members of the crew. She had learned that, as her body reverted to human processing, she also needed social contact to stay healthy and balanced, and if this contact was lacking, then she would have the Doctor droning on at her about her raised cortisol levels or drop in her levels of dopamine.

When she entered the mess hall, Neelix greeted her brightly and sincerely. She was only now starting to be aware of how much his earlier kindness to her must have cost him: when she had first known him, he had continued to show her only the utmost respect and concern, even as she had informed him of the Borg designation for his species and the evaluation of their contribution to the Collective. Once, she had thought him simple and irritating, but now, she had grown to have a greater understanding of his complexity and the depths to his character. She always felt that the more she appreciated Neelix, the more it meant that she was becoming human.

"How was your regeneration cycle today?" Neelix asked, always aware that she did not sleep as other species did.

"Satisfactory," Seven replied. "And how was your sleep cycle?"

Neelix looked momentarily taken aback, seeing as this was the first time Seven had ever returned one of his questions with an enquiry of her own. But he was never one to shy away from showing appreciation, so he beamed back at her and replied, 'Most satisfactory! I dreamt my leola root ice cream was a big hit with the night shift when they came off duty. Would you like to try some?'

Seven suddenly found herself hesitating over how she should respond. It would all have been perfectly clear to her before; she would have declined, of course, preferably with a clear expression of refusal such as, "The Borg do not eat ice cream" or "Ice cream is irrelevant" or "I do not require non-nutritional supplements at this time." And she certainly wouldn't have wasted any time wondering about it. But now it occurred to her that if she responded in such a way then Neelix would be disappointed…and not only that, but she felt a reluctance to be the cause of this feeling. It seemed that disappointing him in such a minor matter might be classified as …inefficient.

She considered the problem for a moment and said, "I do not think that ice cream is a suitable food for me at this time of day. However, I would be happy to try a portion after my duty shift." She noticed how Neelix beamed back at her, even more broadly than usual, and she saw that he had put an extra sprig of Parthian parsley on her plain omelet when he brought over her usual breakfast dish. It gave her a small sense of satisfaction and progress.

She glanced around the mess hall to see if there was anyone she could talk to. In doing so, she suddenly spotted a tearful Naomi Wildman, Voyager's youngest crew member, running in through the mess hall doorway in her blue pyjamas. Seven noted that Naomi's face was a tight red ball of distress, as tears streamed down her face, and her hair stuck out in sleep-tousled tufts. In her arm, Naomi clutched her little toy elephant tightly to her chest.

"Mummy! Mummy!" Naomi cried out, looking desperately around the mess hall. Seven of Nine looked around as well, trying to locate the child's mother. She knew Naomi was frightened of Seven herself, and she judged it best not to approach the child when she was already so distressed. Suddenly it seemed as though Seven heard the strange words, "What's up with Peek-a-Boo? Dry your eyes, Sleepy Rabbit!" as though they had been whispered across a vast and empty space. She shivered and turned slowly expecting to see behind her…what exactly? Who? Seven had the strangest feeling that her own mother was suddenly behind her, rubbing her own small six-year-old's back as she sobbed uncontrollably over a long forgotten hurt.

There was Samantha Wildman behind her calling, "Naomi! What are you doing out of bed? Come here. It's all right. Mummy's here now." Seven watched as Samantha scooped the little girl up into her arms and Naomi buried her teary face into her mother's shoulder.

"I had a bad dream," the little girl wailed, and her mother carried her out of the mess hall whilst whispering into her ear to quieten her distress.

What's up with Peek-a-Boo? Dry your eyes, Sleepy Rabbit. Seven looked down at her congealing yellow omelet and realised she didn't feel hungry any more. In fact, she had a strange queasy feeling… as though her cortical implant had slightly lost its alignment with reality. Neelix saw her push back her plate and came bustling over.

"Not hungry, Seven? Can I get you something else? Maybe a cup of cocoa or a boiled Eskarian egg?"

Seven glared at him. "I do not require nutritional supplements at this time," she said and stalked out. She missed Neelix's slightly hurt expression as he watched her go.

When Seven arrived in Astrometrics, she pulled up the star chart of the upcoming sector onto the big display screen that took up the whole of the anterior wall. When she looked at it, instead of starting the analytics programme as she had intended, she found herself staring at the vast, gaping expanses of empty space that lay ahead of them and the tiny celestial bodies that lay scattered across them; lonely stars, circling planets, and their small accompanying moons.

Seven heard the swish of the door opening behind her. She straightened slightly, thinking it was the captain come to visit her, and as usual she did not turn around. She kept her eyes fixed on the screen in front of her and waited to feel the strange warmth of the captain as she brought her body up close beside Seven's, slipping effortlessly into her personal space while perhaps placing her hand on Seven's shoulder or upper arm - provoking feelings that were both welcome and slightly disturbing.

However, instead of the captain, it was Commander Chakotay who spoke from behind her. "How are things coming along, Seven?" he asked. "The captain would like to know when you will be able to deliver the course for the next sector."

"Where is the captain? Why didn't she come here herself as she usually does?" Seven asked as she turned to fix the Commander with a disapproving stare.

"The captain doesn't need to explain her decisions to you, Seven… nor to me either," Chakotay said, softening the sharpness of his retort with his admission. "Now what should I tell her? Is she going to have this new course by the end of the day, or is there a problem?"

"Please inform the captain that the results will be available by the end of the present duty shift. I anticipate no problems with this matter," Seven reported matter-of-factly, turning back to the safety of her screen.

Chakotay hardly noticed Seven's attitude as he turned away. Instead, his thoughts returned to worrying about the captain herself. It was three weeks now since the captain had stepped out of her quarters, and she would speak to no one except Chakotay himself under the strictest orders. Chakotay had seen Captain Janeway withdrawn before, but this was the worst bout of depression she had gone through so far. Each time, the symptoms seemed to get more acute, to last longer, to take a greater toll on the captain and her crew.

As Chakotay left the lab, he would have been most surprised, if only he had turned back, to see Seven slightly hunched over the console, leaning on it as though for support and staring avidly at the star charts in front of her as though somehow they might contain the answer to a particularly important and burning question.

Dry your eyes, Sleepy Rabbit. What's up with Peek-a-Boo? Seven no longer saw the star charts, she saw instead in her mind's eye the distress in Naomi's red and tearful features, rigid with misery, incapable of taking in anything around her except her mother. She felt she knew how the little girl must have felt – lost and frightened and desperate for comfort, searching and searching through Voyager's endless corridors and moving restlessly among strangers, desperately searching for that one face in the whole wide universe that represented home to her. Again she seemed to feel her own mother's hand upon her back and something inside her broke and wrenched away.

Then Seven felt something wet fall onto the soft mesh of her Borg hand before rolling onto the console. She glanced up at the ceiling. Where had the water come from? Was there a leaking conduit somewhere? Then she felt something odd and she brushed her hand across a damp track on her own face and discovered the water had leaked out of her very own Borg eye.

She frowned. This was absurd: crying over a little girl's hurt, surely already forgotten by now by the little girl herself. I am Borg, she reminded herself. Borg do not empathise. Seven commanded herself to pay attention to the important work she had to do and to the captain waiting for the results of that work and her fingers began to fly over the console, inputting and cross-checking and analyzing the data stream coming in from the sensors. She was a solitary figure at her console, the very picture of Borg efficiency.

Later

"Seven of Nine, this is Torres in Engineering. Have you been messing about with the damn power couplings again?"

Seven looked up from her console. It appeared that B'Elanna Torres had finally spotted her little power reroute to the sensors. She thought that she had cleverly managed to disguise her unapproved activities as a niggling little energy drain originating on one of the holodecks. But the Chief Engineer seemed to have a special knack when it came to sniffing out Borg 'enhancements' to her precious systems. Seven sighed. For someone who didn't even particularly care whether they ever made it back to that little dustball they called Earth, she found the crew of Voyager annoyingly resistant to too many of her proposed efficiencies, despite their obvious superiority.

"Explain." Seven responded. It was best find out how much Torres knew.

"No, I am not explaining anything to you. Get immediately down to the Jefferies Tube on section 13. I need your help putting the power couplings back as they were. Over and Out…" and Seven heard an eerie string of Klingon curse words floating out over the COM system as B'Elanna signed off.

Seven set her program to compile the data in her absence and left the Astrometrics lab in search of B'Elanna Torres and her latest irrational emotional outburst. Seven had long spotted that the calmer she remained, the more it drove Torres incandescent with rage, so she set her features to their most supercilious and icy as she entered the Jefferies tube. After much practice, she also knew that even the way she crawled along the Jefferies tube in her skin-tight biosuit set Torres' teeth right on edge. She looked up and watched Torres' face flush in irritation.

"This is your work, isn't it?" spat the Engineer whilst indicating with her sonic spanner towards an elegant and masterful adjustment to one of the couplings. "It's got Borg written all over it."

"I do not believe there is anything written there at all," Seven replied calmly leaning forward to inspect the offending area more closely with an air of injured innocence. "Are you sure it is not one of Mr. Paris' adjustments to enhance one of his juvenile holodeck programmes?"

"No, Seven of Nine, that is what you'd like me to think," said Torres sharply. "But we have just spent all morning trying to run tests on the latest Warp drive enhancements and each time we got to the results stage, the holodeck programme would go into a glitch and send us back to the start again. Six wasted hours running the programme and hunting round the hologram emitters trying to spot the problem."

Torres turned her head to cast a baleful eye on the former Borg drone. "I really don't understand you at all. For eighteen years, you do nothing in your Borg Cube but follow every single Borg instruction like a good little drone, and now that you are out of the Collective, it seems you can't follow even the simplest protocol. I-just-don't-get-it!"

As B'Elanna Torres finished her last comment, she jerked back her head to give her words a powerful emphasis, but in doing so, delivered a sharp, eye-watering crack to her skull on the bulkhead. She gave a yelp of pain and, dropping the spanner, curled into a tight ball of agony in front of Seven's horrified eyes. Whimpering and hissing through her teeth, B'Elanna rocked herself back and forth against the pain, her face was drawn up into a tight mask of rigid distress, and without thinking about it and in the panic of the moment, Seven of Nine reached out and began to rub her hand up and down Torres' back in order to try and soothe her pain. What had Seven's mother said to her when she was hurt? She'd said those strange but familiar words, "What's up with Peek-a-Boo?"

"Kahless!" cried Torres when she had got enough of her senses back to become aware of what Seven was doing. "What the hell are you doing? Stop it at once! Get me to Sickbay!"

The sharpness of her tone brought Seven back to herself, and she quickly ordered a site to site emergency transport for Torres to Sickbay. She did not go herself. She suddenly felt quite confused about what had just happened. The Doctor would know how to take care of Torres. He would know what to do and how to help her. Seven felt a strange urge to stay hidden alone in the Jefferies Tube for a bit longer.

Seven bowed her head in confusion. What had she been doing? Why had she decided to touch Torres, of all people, like that? The earlier sense of queasiness had returned, only now it was even stronger. She realized that perhaps she should get herself to Sickbay, but the thought of being confronted by an angry Chief Engineer in front of the Doctor made the heart of even the former Borg drone quail. She picked up the scattered tools and placed them neatly in the Engineer's toolbox. Then she turned and crawled back out of the Jeffries Tube with a lot less aplomb than she had shown when she arrived.

Later

"Get her out of here and take her to the Brig!" ordered a furious Janeway in her hardest, most uncompromising command tones. "I don't know who let her into my private quarters against my express orders, but when I find out, they can expect to be punished."

Seven realized, at that point, that her plan to deliver the new course that she had been plotting, directly into the captain's hands was a complete failure. She also realized that breaking into the captain's quarters, in order to make the delivery, had not been such a great idea either. It was clear that the captain had not, in fact, been waiting for an opportunity to talk with Seven face to face. The captain did not want to discuss Seven's new feelings with her. She had no words of wisdom or comfort to offer Seven at this time, and Seven felt utterly bereft. She had had reason to believe that she and the captain had, slowly but surely, been growing closer and now it seemed that all had been cast away.

Seven felt the hands of the security officers on her arms. She knew she could probably take them both down with her superior Borg strength, but then what was the point? The captain's face was already turned away from her back into the shadows, staring out of the window into the depths of space, and she no longer displayed any interest in the drama going on behind her.

But before her captain had turned away from her, Seven had seen the furious expression of outrage in her face – the tightness and the stony rigidity and something else that had frightened Seven even more than the anger. It had been a face completely lacking in the warmth and energy that had greeted Seven of Nine ever since she had first been taken aboard Voyager as a dazed and disoriented and dangerous Borg drone. Then the captain's sparkling and vivid expressions of care, concern, enthusiasm and joy and admiration had worked upon Seven with a kind of sympathetic magic, calling her back to humanity from the dark spaces where she had been hiding, calling her out of herself and out of the nightmare she had been lost in. Now that was all gone, and Seven had no fight left in her to go on with.

As they jostled her out of the captain's private quarters, the data padd that Seven had been trying to deliver slipped from her fingers and fell onto the carpet. That was no longer relevant either, and Seven made no attempt to draw attention to it or to retrieve it.

Once in the brig and with the force field up to keep her in the cell, Seven started to feel very alone. It was her greatest fear. Since the guard had retired somewhere into the shadows of the entry room, she sat on the bunk in the darkened space and tried to distract herself from the loneliness by contemplating the strange beauty of Borg algorithms. Unfortunately, it seemed that just when she needed their consolation the most, they failed her, and Seven found herself remembering instead the first time she had been put in the brig nearly two years ago.

How small and puny the captain had seemed to her then, and how deluded her pathetic faith in individuality and humanity…until the moment that brought them crashing into physical contact. And Seven thought back over that first electric feeling of bonding between them. It had started as an expression of anger and hurt when Seven had suddenly lashed out at captain Janeway, pushing her away with a cry of pain and rage… and then suddenly she had found herself in the Captain's arms, crouched over the bunk and cradled from behind by the captain who had held on tightly to her and would not let her go. Seven shivered even now as she remembered it – how powerful the sensation was of the captain's body pressed against her back with those strong hands gripping Seven and keeping her in place, maintaining the contact between them until she eventually got through to Seven.

It had been the first physical contact with another human being in eighteen years, and it had powerfully and unexpectedly cut through all the discussion and words. Instead it had opened up a whole new world of dizzying sensations; until then entirely undreamt of by Seven and utterly beyond the comprehension of the Borg.

But in those first weeks that encounter in the Brig had not been the only moment of powerful physical contact between the Starfleet captain and the former Borg drone. Seven knew that she would never have made her first stumbling steps towards humanity if the captain had not been there to pull her out of the terrifying abyss of her new-found solitude. She remembered all the nights when the captain had brought her out of her regeneration cycle and she'd realized that she'd been screaming. Seven remembered how, each time, the captain had been there for her, stumbling but always holding tight to the terrified and traumatised drone. And as Seven, waking from the darkness, had felt herself clutched in that close and supportive embrace, so Seven had been allowed to experience the enticing human warmth emanating from the captain's body and feel the way it penetrated her own shivering skin, working its magic and soothing the anguish away.

Suddenly, Seven remembered the tight, rigid, angry expression she had observed on the captain's face, when she had seen Seven standing there, unexpectedly, in her quarters. How fast the captain's face had changed, from its private pinched and drawn expression, to outrage at being seen by another crew member, at being seen by Seven of Nine.

At the time, Seven had only read fury in that look, but now she saw that perhaps it was masking something else: a terrible misery and fear like that which she had seen on Naomi's crumpled face or an angry pain like that which B'Elanna had shown her. With this thought, something shifted in Seven's outlook and she stopped noticing her own sense of loss and instead registered a frightening need in the captain, something gnawing away at her and keeping her from herself. The more she thought about it, the more Seven saw that she should try to do something to alleviate that pain, just as the captain had many times done something for her. But what to do? What comfort could she offer that would be acceptable to the captain? Was this a problem that could be solved by Borg ingenuity?

Then Seven looked down at her hands, which had, seemingly of their own accord, picked up the pillow on the prison bunk, and she saw that she was holding it gently like a child to her chest. What's up with Peek-a-Boo? Dry your eyes, Sleepy Rabbit. She stroked the pillow over and over and found it felt strangely comforting, like a calming voice heard in her sleep emanating from her distant past, something returning to her from across a vast expanse of time.

The security guard looked up from his post at the console and got quite a shock when he saw the cold and unemotional Borg drone slowly comforting her prison pillow as she clutched it tightly to her chest. Later he watched as she slowly toppled over onto the bunk, and realised she had fallen asleep. He thought it over for a moment, then lifted the force field and went in to cover Seven of Nine gently with a blanket.


	2. Chapter 2

Summary: As Captain Janeway withdraws into depression, Seven begins to become more aware of her own feelings and those of others around her. But can Seven use her new awareness to help Captain Janeway cope with her dark emotions?

_The more she thought about it, the more Seven saw that she should try to do something to alleviate that pain, just as the captain had many times done something for her. But what to do? What comfort could she offer that would be acceptable to the captain? Was this a problem that could be solved by Borg ingenuity?_

Chapter 2

When she woke up 2.34 hours later in the Brig, Seven of Nine discovered that she felt strangely refreshed and infused with a new sense of purpose. It was as though as she slept her mind had been mulling over the problem of how to help the captain, and as a result Seven found she had managed to reach a kind of conclusion. She now knew that, without delay, she needed to affect a one-woman-Borg-hybrid rescue mission.

Seven looked around the cell and tried to work out exactly how she was going to escape. She consulted her Borg database, which contained the knowledge of thousands of species. She began to compile and cross-reference information on prison break-outs, and as she mentally scrolled through the data, she evaluated and either discarded or saved each entry depending on its potential for application to her present situation. Approximately 37 minutes later, she knew that she had located the most effective method. And Seven wasted no time in putting it into effect. She fell from the bunk noisily and heavily onto the floor, clutching her head in seeming agony. She had just discovered that, without a doubt throughout the Delta quadrant, dissemblance was the most effective route to staging a prison escape.

When the security detail came to escort her to Sick Bay (Lt. Commander Tuvok had sent four of them – double the usual number, Seven noted with a small jolt of pride) it did not take much for the former Borg drone to have them all quickly and efficiently disarmed and rendered helpless in a heap. It was just a matter of a few well-aimed blows delivered on the basis of simple calculations of trajectory paths, factoring in a simple sliding friction coefficient in combination with the vector from collision point to centre of mass. Nothing Seven couldn't handle easily on the run.

Once she found herself the last one standing in the Brig entry room, Seven accessed the console and stealthily accessed the ship's systems, swiftly and efficiently providing a false reading of her biodata in Sickbay, accessing the Doctor's programme and adjusting it so that the Doctor would inform Commander Tuvok that Seven was being kept under observation by him in Sickbay, and the security detail now appeared to have gone on to take part in a training programme on one of the holodecks. Seven then set up a few power couplings to fail in engineering, nothing too catastrophic – just enough to keep everyone's attention focused on solving the problem before the toilets over-flowed. Satisfied that she now had at least a couple of hours before her deception was discovered, Seven removed the cover from the nearest Jeffries tube and set off on the long crawl to her next important destination.

As Seven arrived at the ventilation vent set in the wall of the bathroom of the captain's quarters, Seven suddenly suffered from an uncharacteristic moment of doubt. Usually once she committed to a course of action, she no longer bothered herself with further evaluation of its efficiency; she was always confident that she had been able to calculate the optimum action to take.

But now she hesitated. Seven knew that the captain had come into Seven's own cargo bay at night uninvited whilst she was regenerating, just to be there for her if Seven needed help. And now Seven believed she ought to do the same for the captain. However, Seven also found herself contemplating a repeat of the earlier scene that day in Captain Janeway's private quarters, when she had ignored a direct order from Commander Chakotay and had brought to the captain the new course for Voyager herself. She recalled just how angry Captain Janeway had been. Now Seven dreaded to think what might await her as punishment for a repeat performance of her earlier offence of breaking and entering, perhaps with extra assault charges added … maybe, and she shuddered to think of it, she would be summarily 'spaced'; sent out of an airlock to die alone in the terrifying vacuum of space just as the other drones had been when she had first come aboard Voyager. She sighed, as she saw no alternative to her present course of action except to continue. Either she would help the captain or she would be punished. She was willing to take the risk.

She eased herself down from the ventilation shaft in the ceiling and stared around at the captain's inner sanctum; at the large mirror, at the shelves and jars and bottles and brushes. Seven had never been in a woman's private bathroom on Voyager before. It suddenly seemed terribly intrusive to be there uninvited amongst the captain's most personal items. A small, intricately-carved bottle on a shelf caught Seven's eye. It was the exact colour of the captain's eyes when she was in a good mood.

Fascinated, Seven reached out to touch the bottle, and then brought it to her nose to smell it. She recognised that inside the bottle was the scent the captain wore, but without the deeper, richer notes provided by the captain's own body. It was these notes which Seven now realised made the smell so alluring to her when on Captain Janeway's own person. Seven caught sight of her own alien reflection looming out of this very human bathroom in the mirror, and she saw how out-of-place she seemed. Then she looked around one last time to add every detail to her eidetic memory before stealing silently out of the room and into Captain Janeway's bedroom.

Now Seven found herself in yet another room she had never set eyes on before, and which gave her a strange, fluttery feeling of nervousness in her belly to look upon. The only light in the room came from the stars gleaming in the darkness beyond the wide window, and in the uncanny pale starlight, Seven could make out the bed, with its crumpled sheets and the lonely figure that lay between them: Captain Janeway herself, strangely shorn to Seven's eyes of all her command regalia, curled up into herself and whimpering from time to time in her sleep. It took Seven's Borg-enhanced hearing, but she distinctly made out her own name on the captain's lips and her heart lurched painfully in her chest.

Seven moved closer to look down at her captain. She spotted something wet on Captain Janeway's cheek – it was, she noted, a tear just like the one she herself had shed earlier while feeling ashamed and confused. The captain was crying in her sleep, and Seven knew her instinct was correct and that the captain needed her help. Seven knew what she had to do – she had to get into the bed beside the captain and rescue her, just as the captain had rescued Seven herself so many times from her own nightmares.

Seven then realised she couldn't climb into the bed whilst wearing her biosuit with built-in shoes and heels, so she reached up and undid the catch of the biosuit at the neck and peeled it down over her body and legs, and stepping out of it naked, left it crumpled on the floor. But although when she stepped away from it, she felt freer and happier than she had done so in a long time, as she took hold of the sheet, she suddenly remembered the often irrational and conflicted attitudes humans displayed towards nakedness. So, she looked around for something to put on herself.

There seemed to be nothing to wear, until she discovered a drawer under the bed. It contained a pile of Janeway's purple vests, one of which Seven struggled into and which, once on, was stretched dangerously tight across her somewhat larger breasts and reached barely down to her navel. She also found a pair of silk trousers that she could just about manage to wriggle into, and the seam of which pinched her oddly at her groin.

Next, Seven slowly and carefully pulled back the sheet from the bed, and slid in beside the sleeping captain. It was the first time she had ever been in a bed as an adult. It felt strange and yet somewhere in her mind, there seemed to be an echo like a distant chime – she could do this, she had done it before. She didn't want to jolt the captain out of her sleep, so she slowly shifted over to her and gently slid her arm across the captain's body so that her hand rested upon the captain's stomach. And then Seven turned towards the captain and pulled her legs up so that the captain's bottom rested lightly against Seven's lap as she curled herself around her. She rested her face lightly against Janeway's shoulder, careful not too press her Borg eye implant too hard into the captain's soft skin. Then Seven didn't quite know what to do next… so she waited.

Suddenly, she felt the captain shift against her, felt her sigh deeply and then, while still asleep, Janeway turned. Instinctively Seven shifted with her, straightening her legs so as not to entangle them with the captain's and wake her up. And, after this readjustment, the captain now had an arm thrown over Seven's side, and her face was pressed up against Seven's chest where Seven felt the warm, damp exhalation from Janeway's lungs fall in long slow puffs against her skin.

She now had access to the captain's back, and she disentangled her arm and slid it across the captain's back so that her palm rested against the material of the captain's nightdress. Then, just as she had practised in the Brig with the pillow, she began to move her hand slowly and firmly against her captain's back, feeling the slight ripple of muscle and bone beneath the soft material. She wanted to whisper something but knew the words she had said to B'Elanna earlier were not right. They represented a memory, but this was now. Instead, she searched the useless Borg database, and then decided to use her own instincts. She thought a while and then Seven leaned in to whisper against the captain's ear, "You are not alone… Kathy. You are not alone."

And as she said the captain's given name, she felt her shift against her and heard her murmur in her sleep, "Seven?" and felt her nuzzle a little more closely against her breast. And, as Seven calmly rubbed the captain's back, she felt the captain fall slowly into a deeper and healthier sleep cycle, and she felt a deep satisfaction in the knowledge that her rescue mission so far might be counted, at least in terms of some of its objectives, as a success. With a heady pleasure, Seven inhaled and enjoyed the warm scent of the captain's skin and hair, and Seven marvelled at how an activity as mundane as regeneration might be so unexpectedly satisfying in its human version.

Later

"Seven of Nine, what the hell are you doing in the captain's bed uninvited?" Captain Janeway barked roughly against the Borg drone's ear.

Startled, Seven's eyes flew open to see the captain staring down at her. Her hair was mussed and rather interesting-looking, but her eyes had that grey and stormy look they got whenever Seven had broken an irrational but terribly important Starfleet rule.

"I came here on a rescue mission," Seven announced simply. "I wanted to help you just as you helped me in the past whenever I was upset and unhappy… However, I wish to report that it has not proved to be very easy to comfort you, Captain. I believe I was the one who had to undertake this mission as there is no one else on this crew with all the necessary credentials needed to carry it out successfully. I had to disarm four security officers and a guard and break out of the brig. I also had to reprogramme the Doctor and to disrupt the ship's power supply."

When she looked at the captain, Seven noted that she had left her mouth open slightly and she was simply staring at her in amazement.

"Furthermore, I also had to practise being comforting using B'Elanna Torres and a prison pillow," Seven continued, adding, "The latter being somewhat more amenable. I also had to get into some of your clothes so as not to disturb you with my nakedness. None of this has proved to be easy...but I managed it. When I arrived here, you were crying and whimpering in your sleep. Since administering my comfort, you have been sleeping like a baby and even dribbling a little onto my chest."

At this point Seven indicated towards a damp patch on the tank top.

"If as a punishment, you wish…" Here Seven trembled a little at the thought, "..wish to 'space' me, I will comply…only…please, I request that you carry out the punishment quickly."

Seven watched as the captain's expression seemed to melt a little in front of her eyes as she tried to understand what her Borg friend had just done and what it all meant. The captain seemed to be getting that rather soft and gentle look that Seven appreciated so much whenever she caught sight of it aimed in her direction. She took the opportunity to close the space that had opened between them and pulled the captain into a warm embrace.

"You are a superior being, Captain Janeway," the former Borg drone told her. "You possess greatness but right now you are conflicted and lacking in harmony. You feel you are alone, but you are not. I have come to find you...and bring you home."

Seven felt the captain's arms come around her torso and envelop her a kind of grateful squeeze. She felt Janeway's head rest against her shoulder, and a strange keening sound and a strange vibration began to come from the captain, and Seven knew she was sobbing against her. But now what should she say?

"It's OK, Captain, I've got you," she murmured over and over again against the captain's hair, rubbing her captain's back in her unhurried and untiring way, until she became aware that the sobbing was slowly subsiding.

And then Janeway pulled away and was a little too embarrassed to look right then directly into Seven's face, so instead she picked up Seven's Borg hand for a closer inspection. She ran her fingers over the sensor-enhanced fingertips and the powerful exterior tendons made of dark Borg webbing, and then she turned the hand over and ran her fingers over the softer, warmer mesh of the palm. And then Janeway lifted that strange and alien hand and placed it against her own cheek as she finally looked directly into Seven's eyes and said, "I am sorry I have been gone. I know you have been worried."

"We all are. Even little Naomi is upset. We don't know what is happening or why you can't be with us or talk to us," Seven told her honestly. "And the worst thing is that we don't know how to help you."

Captain Janeway gave a wry and amused smile, "Well, you don't seem to have done a bad job, Seven."

"Not all the mission objectives have been completed yet," said Seven gravely. "You will tell me what the matter is so that I can ascertain the optimal method to help and support you."

The Captain's eyes slid away. "It's not easy to talk about, Seven. As your captain, you know that I should be guiding you, not confiding in you. I can't talk about these things with you. It doesn't feel right."

"I am Borg," Seven said. "Or I _was_ Borg, and as a Borg drone I carried out innumerable monstrous and unforgivable acts of assimilation. You have never once in all the time I have known you judged me for that. You have only ever tried to understand me, help and support me. I will never judge you, Captain, because you have not taught me to do so. But you must know that you cannot fulfil your role as captain that is so essential to you and to this crew unless you have someone you can confide in, someone you can lean on, who will pick you up and keep you close when you feel you are floating away from the rest of us.

It is clear to me that I am the one most suited for that role aboard this ship. I recognise your symptoms as those of depression, because I have experienced them myself. I know what it is to lose one's way, to have to battle to carry out even the simplest of tasks and all the time to remain acutely aware of how much has been lost. You once trusted your life and the lives of all your crew to me because I told you that I could carry out the necessary task…and now I am telling you that I can take care of you, Captain, if only you will let me."

Captain Janeway stared at Seven, and then her face wobbled slightly, though she refused to let it crumple up like Naomi Wildman's had. She grabbed onto Seven as though she were the only thing that could save her in the huge, cold, inert, impersonal universe, and then, wrapped in the arms of her own rescued Borg drone, Janeway finally spoke of the burden she carried: of her terrible guilt, of the life-sapping loneliness, of her loss of confidence in herself and her decision-making abilities, of her constant tearfulness, of her panic attacks, of her lack of appetite, of her irrational fears and inability to meet the crew. And through it all, Seven listened and did not judge, but took onto her own broad shoulders the burden of care for her captain, and as she did so she felt that earlier sense of unease and disjointedness that had been bothering her for so long lifting itself away.

And that was how Commander Chakotay and Commander Tuvok and a squad of security officers armed to the teeth with phaser rifles and pistols and grenades found the two of them when they finally crow-barred their way past all the infuriating Borg algorithms cast over the doors and burst into the captain's quarters. There were the two women, tightly clasped in each others arms, smiling and solemn and tearful, and for some reason the Borg was wearing a teeny tiny purple tank top.


End file.
